Team will play freely in last two ODIs: Smith

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Last Updated: Wed, Jan 19, 2011 13:40 hrs

Cape Town, Jan 19 (IANS) South African captain Graeme Smith is hoping that his team will put up a better show in the remaining One-dayers against India as the players will not be carrying the baggage of pressure after the announcement of the World Cup squad.

The Proteas lost two close matches in Johannesburg and Cape Town after their comprehensive win in the first ODI in Durban.

Though down 1-2 in the five-match series, Smith is hoping for a turnaround.

'The World Cup squad comes out tonight and that will ease a lot of minds and stress on the players. Hopefully it frees up a lot of players, and makes them play with the sort of freedom in the next few games,' Smith said before the World Cup squad was announced.

On not being able to come out on top in the last two encounters, Smith said: 'I Keep reiterating the same point. The margins have been so small in the last two games, we could easily be 2-1 up or 3-0 up. Just got to keep training hard and keep doing the right things and hopefully the things will kick into place.'

Smith admitted that they were 20 runs short of a competitive total at the Newlands Stadium here Tuesday.

'I think 220 gave us a chance. The wicket was very difficult to bat on, had sort of plates on it, and its two-paced nature made strokes very difficult. It also had up and down bounce.

'But we were really hoping for 240. JP (Duminy) and Faff du Plessis played well together to take us to a decent total. Our powerplay was poor again, we lost JP and Faff within two overs, and we only got 19 run in our last six overs,' he said.